Random (a)musings from the author of "No Roads Lead to Rome" and "Aqueduct to Nowhere"

History Repeats, Again!

History Repeats, Again!

Saturday, August 10, 2013

Lost in Translation

I
visited New Orleans and the Bayou country a long time ago.

A few
memories stand out like being refused entrance to a Zydeco bar in Lafayette
because it wasn’t “Honkey Night.”

Somewhere
along the way, I saw two bumper stickers whose wisdom has stuck with me ever
since.

The
first said “Don’t Drink and Drive. You Might Spill Your Drink.” In a region
that boasted drive-through Daiquiri stands, the logic was self-evident.

The
other said, “We Don’t Care How You Do It Up North.”

This
was back in the pre-Katrina days. Since the civil war had long since given way to
civil rights, this sentiment just passed right through me.

It
wasn’t until I had changed jobs, cultures, towns and countries a couple times
that I grasped what that Southerner had been trying to tell me.

It may
be vanity, but we’d all like to think that we’ve accumulated some useful experience
over the years. Wisdom, maybe. Perhaps our accomplishments are worthy of
respect and our contributions are appreciated.

Fine,
but don’t expect any of it to translate.

It
turns out that much of your importance is context dependent. It’s local. Unlike
changing hairstyles, when you change jobs, towns, schools, or cultures you’ll
probably have to re-build the part of your self-image that derives from how
others perceive you.

You
may have done it better out west, but nobody wants to hear about it back east.

The
exception to this is if you are some combination of rich, famous, powerful, or
beautiful, but stature in one place doesn’t always translate to the next.
Appearance is the most immediate example of this.

One warm
Sunday, long ago, my family was sitting in a public square of a small village
north of Barcelona. A proud, well-dressed fellow was strutting his well-dressed
family across the plaza. He looked like the sort of rotund, stuff-shirted
silent film character who might have played “The Mayor” or “The Rich Industrialist” in
a Charlie Chaplin movie. He was prim, proud, and polished. All he lacked was a
top hat. It seemed like too hot a day for a coat and tie, but this was a fellow
for whom appearance trumped comfort.

Approaching
from the other direction was an American family that we knew from our kids’
school. They hailed from one of the richest postal codes on earth and were
living in Spain while their kitchen was being remodeled back home. He was a
descendent of a famous film star. She was many years his younger. Their kids
probably pooped gold nuggets. I don’t know if they were good people or not—the truth
is, they were kind of snooty but you couldn’t tell by looking at them. They
dressed in what could mercifully be called “Shabby Chic.”

One great
thing about the West Coast of the USA is that you can’t tell anything about
anyone by the way they are dressed. Millionaires look like bums. Bums drive
Cadillacs. Beautiful people turn ugly and the famous, infamous.

But to the
Spanish patriarch, the Yankee millionaires must have looked like a walking
disease. In his eyes, their appearance masked any possibility that they might
be charitable, upstanding, or worthy of common courtesy. Not that it should matter, but they
offered him no visual clue that they happened to have money coming out of their
ears. All he could see is that their ears were dirty and on an
intercept course with his sparkling offspring.

He
judged their dog-eared "West Coast Casual" by its cover. They weren’t even looking at
his first edition copy of "Old World Formal." These two fellows and their
fine families may have had everything in common, but there was no chance the twain
would meet.

In the
Chaplin version of this scene, the Spaniard’s bushy eyebrows would have knocked
the top hat off his head. In my memory, his stiff body language signaled his offense at having to share the public square with such apparent riff-raff. He
spun his family about and herded them back to a corner of the plaza where appearances
mattered.

The
oblivious Southern Californians continued on their loud, merry way, indifferent
to how anyone did it up north.

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“Life’s Big Zoo” is a catcher in the rye bread coming of age in the late sixties story set in L.A.'s Laurel Canyon, 1968

"No Roads Lead to Rome" was a semi-finalist in the Amazon 2011 Breakthrough Novel Competition. Historical fiction, political humor, and a wild adventure set on the fringes of the Roman Empire in A.D. 123

Fans of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," Terry Pratchett, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and Monty Python will love these novels.

Publishers Weekly said "No Roads" is "...recounted swiftly, with verve, panache, and a light tread that makes for a delightful, well told tale."My free Kindle book "The Expat's Pajamas - Barcelona" is a collection of humorous articles from my years in Spain. If you've ever lived abroad or plan to, you'll get a kick out of this e-book that Free (on Amazon and Smashwords) to promote international misunderstanding.

Me, by me.

I was born high above Sunset Blvd and grew up in a suburb of Disneyland.
I've lived and worked in France and Spain, speak 2.5 languages, and play a mean guitar.
I got the idea for “No Roads Lead to Rome” while hiking in the hills above Barcelona, Spain. The story came to me in a blinding flash that took the next 5 years to extract.
I'm also the author of "The Expat's Pajamas," a collection of mostly true stories about life in Barcelona.